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NASA NTRS2021

Cooperative Upper Class E Airspace: Concept of Operations and Simulation Development for Operational Feasibility Assessment

Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) is a novel community-based traffic management concept incorporating the FAA, NASA, and industry’s collaborative efforts to support safe, efficient, and scalable future operations in the airspace near and above 60,000 ft. The concept complements Air Traffic Control (ATC) infrastructure and Air Traffic Management (ATM) services by facilitating cooperative operations with ETM provided services. This paper presents an initial Cooperative Separation Management (CSM) concept for High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) vehicles’ conflict detection and resolution during their extended operations. A prototype simulation platform has been developed to visualize and assess the concept during demonstrations to stakeholders. Further development plans for simulations and the CSM concept are discussed.

upper Class E airspace↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Roadmap to Cooperative Operating Practices for Strategic Conflict Detection and Resolution in the Upper Class-E Traffic Management Concept

As the governing body of flight operations in the highly anticipated emergent area of Upper Class E airspace (60,000 ft and above), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized the potential for a possible extensible traffic management system for new entrants into this domain. Following the successes with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) and Advanced / Urban Air Mobility (AAM / UAM) Traffic Management programs, FAA put forth an initial concept of operations for supporting the start of the Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) concept. Like UTM and AAM / UAM, ETM is envisioned to also be a community-based, industry driven cooperative management concept. However, tailoring it to be adaptable to the atmospheric communication, navigation, and surveillance deficits, as well as the diverse vehicle and mission profiles operating in the ETM environment will be the challenge. As such, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center has been investigating several technologies that will help enable industry in the development of this new type of cooperative operating environment. These technologies are being prototyped and will be tested in a collaborative evaluation of an initial ETM system in late 2023. The evaluation will concentrate on building out ETM system technologies that will inform the participants regarding operational intent sharing, strategic conflict detection, and the resultant deconfliction process. In addition to the technical aspects, key roles and responsibilities will need to be defined. This will be done through exploring community-agreed upon Cooperative Operating Practices (COPs) that include procedures and capabilities to aid in timely, strategic conflict identification and resolution to be developed during the evaluation. As an initial step to the evaluation, the ETM research team at NASA Ames solicited industry feedback on various aspects of ETM operations from subject matter experts. A virtual tabletop walkthrough session was held over a two-day period to follow a roadmap through the functional steps needed to build COPs, focusing on strategic conflict detection and resolution. Overall, the ETM tabletop provided insights into how the community wanted to instantiate the generation and sharing of operational intent, detect strategic conflicts and resolve those conflicts using a preliminary set of procedural community-agreed upon COPs.

Upper Class-E Traffic Management (ETM)↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Roadmap to Cooperative Operating Practices for Strategic Conflict Detection and Resolution in the Upper Class E Traffic Management Concept

As the governing body of flight operations in the highly anticipated emergent area of Upper Class E airspace (60,000 ft and above), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized the potential for a possible extensible traffic management system for new entrants into this domain. Following the successes with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) and Advanced / Urban Air Mobility (AAM / UAM) Traffic Management programs, FAA put forth an initial concept of operations for supporting the start of the Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) concept. Like UTM and AAM / UAM, ETM is envisioned to also be a community-based, industry driven cooperative management concept. However, tailoring it to be adaptable to the atmospheric communication, navigation, and surveillance deficits, as well as the diverse vehicle and mission profiles operating in the ETM environment will be the challenge. As such, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center has been investigating several technologies that will help enable industry in the development of this new type of cooperative operating environment. These technologies are being prototyped and will be tested in a collaborative evaluation of an initial ETM system in late 2023. The evaluation will concentrate on building out ETM system technologies that will inform the participants regarding operational intent sharing, strategic conflict detection, and the resultant deconfliction process. In addition to the technical aspects, key roles and responsibilities will need to be defined. This will be done through exploring community-agreed upon Cooperative Operating Practices (COPs) that include procedures and capabilities to aid in timely, strategic conflict identification and resolution to be developed during the evaluation. As an initial step to the evaluation, the ETM research team at NASA Ames solicited industry feedback on various aspects of ETM operations from subject matter experts. A virtual tabletop walkthrough session was held over a two-day period to follow a roadmap through the functional steps needed to build COPs, focusing on strategic conflict detection and resolution.

Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM)↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Advancing Wildland Fire Response with NASA’s Second Shift Capabilities

Novel “Second-Shift” capabilities—leveraging Uncrewed Aerial Systems and Optionally Piloted Vehicles—are identified that could extend wildfire aerial logistics support into night or low-visibility conditions. Expert elicitations with subject-matter experts informed the development of these conceptual capabilities and identified key challenges in wildfire logistics operations. Furthermore, the potential of these capabilities could extend beyond aerial logistics support, encompassing aerial suppression, observation, and emergency extraction support for wildland firefighting. An approach to development, implementation and validation of the novel capabilities is described.

Wildfire logistics↗